Freescale, Vivante, Rightware team on automotive display

LONDON – Automotive displays have been getting a lot more dynamic and flexible and long gone are the days of a physical needle twitching in front of circular dial. That is set to continue thanks to Rightware Oy (Espoo, Finland) a developer of user interface graphics, Freescale semiconductor Inc. (Austin, Texas) and Vivante Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.). The three companies have joined forces to create an automotive infotainment and instrumentation display platform.

Rightware claims that its Kanzi software allows car makers and tier-one automotive suppliers the opportunity to build photorealistic human-machine interfaces. At the same time Kanzi meets requirements for reliability, low start-up time, low power and system resource management.

The Freescale iMX6 range of application processors scales from single to quad-core Cortex-A9 processor cores and supports 2- and 3-D graphics and high-definition video. The Triple Play graphics inside the i.MX6 consists of three Vivante GPU cores – GC2000 for graphics and OpenCL, GC320 for composition and GC355 for OpenVG. OpenVG operates in parallel to the other engines and delivers sharp, fast accurate needle renderings, Rightware said.

"Our collaboration with Freescale and Vivante will help car manufacturers and entire automotive ecosystem to rise to a whole new level with next-generation HMIs," said Tero Sarkkinen, CEO of Rightware, in a statement.

"OpenVG operates in parallel to the other engines and delivers sharp, fast accurate needle renderings, Rightware said."
I guess auto display graphics will be much less complex compared to mobile/consumer devices. So I am wondering what competitive advantage Vivante have over other players like imgtech or ARM/Mali